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One Nation, Indivisible?

© Lynne H. Schultz

There has been a lot of misinformation spread concerning the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 3-judge panel decision declaring the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional. The aspect causing the most confusion seems to be the judge’s decision to “stay” or put a hold on the ruling until after the en banc hearing, which is a hearing by the full 9th Circuit Court. It is not a reversal of the decision, or an attempt by the judge who wrote the opinion to take back what he said. It is merely the typical procedure in a case that is expected to lead to a hearing of the full court and that could be overturned there. There’s no significance to that particular action, although most people on both sides of the issue seem to agree that if the full 9th Circuit does not overturn the decision, that the Supreme Court will, unfortunately.

Further, the 9th Circuit panel did not declare the pledge itself to be unconstitutional - just the phrase “under God”, which was not added to the original pledge until 1954. It was a McCarthy style attempt to root out the communists by rooting out the infidels. The communists happened to be atheists, so the idea was to associate patriotism with God-belief, thus demonizing atheists right along with communists. Is this the sort of motive that Christians want associated with their god? Even today, some Christians do not seem to make a distinction between atheistic communists and atheists who are not communists, or even anti-communist. And that’s exactly the kind of harm that is done by mixing a loyalty oath to God (pledging allegiance “under God”) with a loyalty oath to one’s country. These are two different ideas, and Americans should not have to declare loyalty to God or religion in order to declare loyalty to America. Belief in God is not a prerequisite to being a good person or a patriotic American, and never was.

Christians have described the ruling as taking away their rights to say “under God” if they want to. Yet, children in public schools who want to say the phrase can still do so; it’s just that teachers would no longer be allowed to encourage them to do so. That’s not their job, anyway. Some say the phrase has no religious significance - that it is just ceremonial, but the reaction of the religious right tells a very different story. There have even been some death threats against Michael Newdow, the atheist plaintiff in the case. Worse yet, according to Jeffery Jay Lowder’s article on the Secular Web, some Christians upon hearing the news of these death threats publicly agreed the death threats were a good idea!